Doris Lee

Interview with Paul Jobin, a French sociologist, Director of the CEFC Taipei (French Research Centeron Contemporary China, Taipei Office) and an Associate Professor at the Universityof Paris Diderot where he teaches the sociology of contemporary Japan. In 2002, Paul has conducted a survey with workers atFukushima nuclear plants. After this year disaster, he had the opportunity to meet with a contract worker who is still working there.

Japan is one of the most advanced countries globally, economically and in terms of technology. Since 1973, the country embarked on the use of nuclear energy to solve its excessive energy dependence. Before before the earthquake and nuclear reactor meltdown in March 2011, about 30% of the country’s electricity needs were provided by Japan’s 54 main nuclear reactors, and this was expected to increase to at least 40% by 2017. Much of this information was reported after Japan’s disastrous earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which not only created hundreds of thousands of refugees but also damaged nuclear reactors, especially Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

This disaster is both natural and human. By now, many aspects of the post-nuclear disaster have been pinpointed as due to known and preventable human risks being taken. The tragedy continues at the individual level as well as social. Parts of the immediate area of the nuclear plant and earthquake are highly radioactive, and estimated to be uninhabitable for at least one hundred years. Recently, some hot spots have been detected as far as Tokyo. It looks as if a huge area of North-east Japanbecame a sort of “controlled zone”, the appellation for the zones exposed to radiations in a nuclear plant. At Fukushima Daiichi, workers are still required to clean the garbages of the disaster so as to reduce the harm to the rest of the country and the world. It is a Faustian bargain, yet the bargain is made by the corporation, while workers work in danger out of compulsion of their economic necessity. Those lacking work are ‘willing’ to face the deadly work environment of nuclear rubble to earn for their families.

Gender Column - Women workers in Tea Plantations and trade unions

Sujata Gothoskar

Tea plantations: context

The tea industry in Indiais one of the oldest industries and one of the largest employers in the organized sector. Over 12 hundred thousand permanent and almost the same number of casual and seasonal, workers are employed in the tea industry. Over 50 per cent of the workers, and in some operations like tea plucking, over 80 per cent of the workers, are women.

Relations on the plantations:

There are broadly four categories of personnel on the plantations – management, staff, sub-staff and workers. But the workers who work on the plantation comprise the bulk of the workforce of the plantation. The ‘field workers’ are engaged in plucking and activities related to the maintenance of the plantation and the bushes. These include hoeing, weeding, pruning, drainage, spraying of pesticides and insecticides, etc. Nearly all of thismost difficult and hazardous work,involving carrying very heavy loads,is performed by women workers. Women carry more than 40 kgs of green leaf on their backs every day for years since they are very young, and later whether they pregnant or old.

Over 90 per cent of the tea workers are either Scheduled Tribes or Scheduled Castes – the lowest in the caste, ethnicity, class and resource hierarchy. Most of the families of the workers have been forcibly or fraudulently brought to the tea gardens several generations ago.

The work of tea workers is arduous in addition to being low paid and insecure. Tea pickers are on their feet all day with heavy baskets on their backs, often on uneven terrain and in harsh weather conditions. Injuries are common, as are respiratory and water-borne diseases. There is often exposure to pesticides and insecticides, which the ILO cites as one of the major health and safety hazards tea workers face.

Editorial: Redefining Collective Bargaining in Asia

Collective bargaining has been one of the corner stones for workers movement not only in their quest to achieve better working and living standards but also to carve out political and social space that allows them to shape their future. In face of the mighty ‘capital’, only the ‘collective’ power of workers has allowed them to bargain and negotiate since the inception of industrial development.

By the 20^th century, as a result of workers struggle, collective bargaining and freedom of association were recognised as basic rights and many countries institutionalised collective bargaining by framing laws and creating institutions predominantly acting to mediate between capital and labour. For some time, collective bargaining thrived in the West with organised labour represented by trade unions negotiating and bargaining with industry under supervision of the State. However, the past few decades have turned out to be ‘game changer’ with ‘neo-liberalism’ taking over as the predominant economic and political discourse with the agenda to re-establish capital accumulation and restore the power of economic elite. This no doubt involved restructuring of the production space forcing workers to compete in the ‘race to bottom’ for lowest wages and vulnerable employment. Living up to its character, neoliberalism also ensured hostility against any forms of social solidarity and collective actions that could constitute barriers to the unprecedented capital accumulation. This led to a serious decline in the membership of the unions – key pillars for collective bargaining, thus tilting the balance completely in favour of capital. The ‘collectivity’ of labour has been under constant threat with the restructuring of labour relations that have emphasised on the individuality of workers with ‘flexible’ work being the order of the day. Workers became ‘divisible’ into temporary, contract and part-time workers and thus turning invisible. Capital mobility and financial globalisation have further weakened the labour bargaining power. The new century is witnessing a complete mismatch between labour that is organised within the national framework, trying to take on an almighty multifaceted and multinational capital that works beyond the control of nation states.